Sunday, November 02, 2008

11-4-08

I did these character designs for a friend a little while back. Had a lot of fun doing it! I miss doing character design these days-- I find when I am bored animating I whip out a clean sheet of paper and start doodling a design or a thumbnail for a future design to keep my mind active. But to be fair, when I was doing character design I missed animating. I know as an animator studying design is imperative to doing good animation. For some reason people seem to segregate design and drawing as separate things. They are not, drawing IS design-- whether it's well designed or not, it IS a design. Maybe this segregation of thinking is why hand drawn animation tends to look so, well, bland. Too many people buy off on the lie that audiences to not relate to graphic character designs. They relate to who they are, not what they look like. Hopefully we'll get an opportunity to blow that old idea out of the water one of these days!

These are wonderful! I agree that it seems a lot of hand-drawn seems bland. Since you work at Disney now, perhaps I can put in a request. I know there are clips of pencil tests and rough animations on DVD extras, but can or will Disney ever release the entire film without the ink and paint on top? Or maybe even without clean-up. Probably not, but I've always wanted to watch an animated film that way. Maybe one of the newer projects perhaps in short form.

wow really cool designs. i agree with your character design statement. im working on some now and its been a challenge keeping all the principles ive learned and putting them together as one complete design package in a way. when i start animating these characters i definitely want to keep the feeling of the unique shapes that ive created to keep the animation interesting. a very good analysis of the current trend of 2d animation.

Trotter: Thanks man, yeah I was sorta being influenced by him when I did these. At least in the methodology--Joonas: Thanks fo the kind words! Hopefully there will be more animation to come!Zar: Awww, thanks! You work is looking great! Did you learn a ton at Pixar?Vince: Thank you! BTW, I got your e-mail I just haven't had ANY time to respond. But I will eventually. As far as your idea, I think we'd (all of us animators) would like that too. The thing is they won't do it unless they think they can make a profit off of it. We'll see, hopefully some day.Chris: Thanks man... yeah, hopefully we'll get to do some more personal stuff here in the future.Alan: Thanks man!

these are beautiful dude. i agree with you about design and its graphical qualities/properties when it relates to drawing and animation. i think one of the dope things about 2d is how you can make graphical statements that are impossible in CG. but they look amazing-like in sleeping beauty or 101 dalmatians. milt's work is just like rediculous because not only is it sophisticated acting, but the drawing is even more sophisticated..in a way that hurts my brain if i think about it took much. for example, take like anita in dalmatians or something-he breaks rules of "depth" by kinda flattening her out, like not making the seams on her shirt sleeves have depth and doing things like not making her collar break the plane of her shoulders..its hard to describe this..but its in there i swear. its like shapes outlined and filled in with details. it sounds kinda simple/simplifies, but its really an advanced concept i think. i think immature students (like me say 3 years ago) would have thought "hey thats kinda lame, that artist isnt drawing the collar in real space..its just cheated." but knowing how to do that properly is like insane. im sorry i wrote so much. this post was inspiring, thankyou.

I lob it! YOU sir, are a talented cartoonist. where did you learn how to paint like that? You should be an artist! My grandson's wife is an artist and she paints drawings for a gift card company... I think she could help you get some work because you obviosly have some talent blah blah blah blah....Great job Matt, you're great

You have some great work posted on your blog which I happened to stumble across. Just some backtracking to an older post of your Disney desk where you mention you have some model sheets from James baxter, could you post any up? I've been trying to get hold of some of his rough work as well but no luck! He's very elusive!

wow! thank you so much for posting not only your awesome artwork and fantastic animation but also the quick little tutorials. The advice certanly helps in the hunt to animate that scene that has that special something.Thanks for the inspiration.